The head of Mexico’s largest cinema chain has said the impending renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) means the US popcorn industry is at risk.

Alejandro Ramirez’s company, Cinepolis de Mexico – which is the fourth largest cinema chain in the world – buys around $10m of kernels from Kansas, Missouri and Iowa.

Ramirez said the impact on the peso of Donald Trump’s campaign had already led the company to look into importing from Argentina instead; further negative impact following the free-trade shakedown would mean they were forced to pull the plug.

The company spends $40m a year on US goods, including screens, projectors and $6.5m of cheese from Wisconsin, which is melted over nachos.

“We import all of our corn for movie theatres from the US thanks to the fact that there’s free trade,” Ramirez told Bloomberg. “If that wasn’t the case – if we go to pre-Nafta tariff levels – then it would be cheaper to bring it from Argentina.”

“A lot of the value chains are complex and nobody has really told people that,” said Ramirez, who is the head of a business chamber seeking to educate US politicians about the benefits of economic integration. “We all need to work better to inform. In the past, it was not necessary, because we never thought free trade would be put at risk.”

Mexico is the largest US popcorn market and accounts for almost a third of all exports. In recent years, demand has grown dramatically from the country, rising threefold since 2006, while the rest of the export market went up only 10%.

China, Japan, South Korea, the UK and Russia are the US’s next largest export destinations. The biggest consumer of popcorn remains the US, where an estimated 28bn quarts are consumed annually.

As well as being popular in cinemas, popcorn is increasingly seen as a low-fat snack outside of the movie house.